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I have a WordPress blog and I have no intention to have a featured image or any image in my post content.

Will this affect my SEO?

Note: I understand I won't get search traffic for images.

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Whether it affects your SEO or not, it depends on user search queries. If your image alt text and caption have some keywords which are not included in any of your paragraphs, and those caption or alt text gives you 1% traffic to a specific webpage, then obviously removing those images with their caption and alt text detail will give you 1% less traffic on those keywords only (on other keywords nothing will change).

So first analyse your blog post on Google search console (Search analytic tool), and check whether alt text and caption give you any traffic benefits from general search results or not. If it does give you some traffic and you still want to remove those images then you can include those keywords in your other paragraph to save 1% traffic loss.

And, if you're not using alt text and caption<figcaption> tag at all, then it's totally fine to remove those images, because as you said you're not concerned about image search engine.

By the way if you read old lazy seo from someone who said "by adding images on your blog post will boost your search position", then it's not totally right. Google always analyses user queries first, and if your blog post image is not related to it, then it will add zero impact in SEO.

But yes, adding images on your blog post is plus point when you share your blog post on social media sites because it displays rich snippet/preview, and it is good for CTR.

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  • Thank you for your answer. Pls i would also like to know if using images from another blog(external image link) will have negative impact on my seo (note: i will include a keyword in the image alt while using it in my article) – Oliverkahn Jun 17 '18 at 12:54
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    Google decided that images at the top of the post increases whether the post is read and how long a person stays on the page, therefore, in their infinite wisdom they make it an engagement factor. It is a tick mark in a check box. Got image? Yep! Check. It does count toward engagement which is an even larger factor. It is like domain age is a factor in domain trust. Now I hate the notion that I have to create an image for each page and many agree. This is why so many images suck! Oh cr@p! I have to create another image. Here is the cheapest and fastest thing I can do so that I can move on. – closetnoc Jun 17 '18 at 16:01
  • I include images on my blog post when I create technical tutorial, it's help to users + it increase engagement in my blog, but it also decrease page speed. So blogger should use images only if it is necessary. To get better CTR from social media, we can use open graph tags without increasing page load time. @Oliverkahn, if it is your blog then, there is no problem to use it, because many of CDN users also do such a thing and host images on other domain, but if it is not yours then first ask for permission(or check image licence), you can't simply copy paste someone image, it cost on bandwidth. – Goyllo Jun 17 '18 at 16:26
  • @Goyllo hope using image from another server will not have bad effect on my seo? – Oliverkahn Jun 17 '18 at 16:32
  • @Oliverkahn As long as it down loads quickly. You should be fine. – closetnoc Jun 17 '18 at 19:39
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  1. Adding optimized image with alt (with keywords you rank for) can positively impact your organic search ranking, so in general it's recommended to add image.
  2. Adding image can improve your UX and increase average time per session (Dwell Time is a ranking factor).
  3. Remember to optimize your images (for example using this tool and use descriptive name of file (separated with hyphens), width/height attributes and of course keywords in alt. Caption is also nice to have.
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  • I don't think that Google can measure dwell time for most sites. Google does track bounce back rate and other user satisfaction metrics that it uses for SEO. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Jun 28 '18 at 13:36
  • @StephenOstermiller Dwell time is the amount of time that passes between the moment a user clicks a search result and then returns back to the search result, so Google can measure it for all websites without the need of having Google Analytics tracking code on site. – DiagnoSEO.com Jun 28 '18 at 17:22

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